The United States welcomed Serbia's arrest of a former Bosnian Serb official for allegedly committing war crimes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
"His arrest is another positive step toward ensuring that those responsible for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia are held accountable," Gonzalo Gallegos, a US State Department spokesman, said.
Serbian authorities confirmed Wednesday that Stojan Zupljanin, who was a top police official in the Bosnian-Serb government, had been taken into custody and would go before the a UN international tribunal to face war crimes charges.
Zupljanin, 56, was a prominent official under then president Radovan Karadzic's government and oversaw the region that included Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.
Karadzic and his wartime commander, Ratko Mladic, remain at large despite continuous international demands for their arrests. The apprehension of war crimes suspects is a central condition for Serbia to join the European Union.